Day 11

We had an early start today as our cab was to pick us up at 7:30am to take us to Vatican City. To give you an idea of distance, we could of actually walked there from our hotel but as it was early and a bit chilly, we got a maxi taxi.

Vatican City is a country inside the city of Rome. A bit hard to get your head around but needless to say we didn't need our passports to get in. We met our guide and went inside the Vatican Museum to start the tour. We learned about the different Popes, the rivalry between Michaelangelo and Raphael, and the story of the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. On our way to the Chapel, we passed through corriidors of tapestry, paintings and amazing ceiling artwork.

We were told the rules of the Chapel, which is no talking or taking pictures. The chapel is about one and half times the size of a basketball court, and gets around 25,000 visitors per day, so it was a bit of a squeeze! There were plenty of people talking and taking pictures, but we stayed silent. The ceiling is quite amazing and not bad for Michaelangelo's first crack at painting (he was a scuplture).

After some time here, we exited into the largest Catholic Church in the world, St Peters Basilica. This is a huge and imprressive building even for the non religious. The massive dome towers over Rome, and looked spectacular from the inside. We were shown around the church, and even witnessed a small service taking place in one of the smaller alters.

After the tour, Steve and Jason decided to climb the 350 stairs to the top of the dome for the commanding views over Rome. It was definitely worth the climb, as the day was clear and warm. We stayed up there for about 20 mins and took plenty of photos, before navigating our way down the very steep and claustrophobic staircase. We then headed back to the hotel for an afternoon of rest.

We all met up at 7pm and headed out for a night at the opera. Not everyone's cup of tea, but as they say, 'when in Rome'. Our tickets included a small meal and it also had a bar so after a couple of drinks we sat down to watch the show. It was a French opera sung in Italian, so as you can imagine it was a bit hard to follow, but we had bought a program so that gave us some idea of what was going on. While not our genre, we were still very impressed with the range and volume of both the male and female singers.

We got out at about 11:15pm and headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day but a very cultured one. It was our last day in Roma as tomorrow the next part of the holiday begins. Our Mediterranean cruise!